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Saturday, 27 August 2016

MY PINK HALF OF THE DRAINPIPE

Here is all I knew about semi-detached houses: I live in
one; they are a quintessentially British way to build a place to live; and they
are less desirable than a detached house, but more than a terraced house or
flat. The last of these made me wonder what kind of question semis are trying
to solve, and why the answer means they make up about a third of all the
housing stock in the UK.

The desirability factor can be seen on the map of any town,
from as early as the nineteenth century – semis became a compromise between the
rows of terraces found in the centre, and the larger detached houses found on
the outskirts, where land was cheaper. This distinction has been muddied due to
the spread of new semi-filled suburbs and estates, and the houses themselves
being built at a lower cost, or lower standard.

This is where I lose the point on why we build semis. If you
look at one of the most important early examples, the Grade II-listed 3-5
Porchester Terrace, London W2, it is designed to look like a substantial
detached house, with a colonnade topped with Grecian urns masking the front
doors placed on opposite sides. The designer, John Claudius Loudon, better
known as a landscape gardener, wanted the houses to appear as one, giving a
sense of dignity to both, rather than each simply being a mirror image of the
other.

The semi my mother grew up in, a simpler, more mass-produced
post-war design, did keep the front doors on opposite sides, but this was already
rare enough to look quite strange, and it annoys me to see how a later occupier
has since moved its entrances around to the front, matching what others did to
theirs in the same road. But, as extensions, white UPVC windows and loft
windows have also been added through the road, the original look was lost long
ago.

Regardless of how they now look, semis most adequately fill
the need to cost-effectively build a house where someone would actually want to
live. They came with a desire to make the area they were found better, giving
rise to both front and back gardens, bringing running water inside the house,
model towns like Port Sunlight and Bournville, the Garden Cities, cul-de-sacs,
building societies, and the mortgage. The semi remains the British middle-class
dream, even if you don’t want to think in those terms.

…and yet, semis also exist in across Europe, Scandinavia, Australia,
Canada and even the United States – what was their thinking? All I know is,
when singing “Santa Baby,” Eartha Kitt (or, if you like, Kylie Minogue) wanted
Santa to, “fill my stocking with a duplex and [cheques]” they could have set
their sights a little higher than just a semi-detached house.